"That formula was no other than the simple analytical expression of what is now generally called the law of the conservation of energy, which has since revolutionized science in nearly all its branches, and which at that time was but little developed or accepted. It is believed that this was not only the first, but that it even still is the only treatise on Analytical Mechanics in which all the phenomena are presented as mere consequences of that single law."
The same law of Action and Reaction, as applied to the moral forces, was stated by Swedenborg more than a century ago,[1] giving us a striking illustration of the universality and simplicity of the law govering both worlds. In its later phase it is an essential part of what the disciples of Swedenborg regard as the most conclusive argument that has yet been made in favor of the freedom of the Will.
Among all the men who rose to eminence in any of the departments of Natural Science during his time, it would be difficult to name one whose labors in the different departments of applied science it would be more interesting or more profitable to dwell upon. They suggest to the most careless reader, what a more careful examination would demonstrate, that the most striking feature of unity that characterizes them all, from the beginning to the end, and towards which every thing he did, studied or wrote seemed to tend, was to find the ultimate or final source of power; that force which, both as a philosopher and as an officer of the state, he had been engaged from his youth upward in trying to reduce to the service of
- ↑ "In everything created by God there is reaction. In Life alone there is action; reaction is caused by the action of Life. Because reaction takes place when any created thing is acted upon, it appears as if it belonged to what is created. Thus in man it appears as if the reaction were his, because he has noother feeling than that life is his, when yet man is only a recipient of life. From this cause it is that man, by reason of his hereditary evil, reacts against God. But so far as man believes that all his life is from God, and that all good of life is from the action of God, and all evil of life from the reaction of man, so far his reaction comes to be from [God's] action, and man acts with God as if from himself. The equilibrium of all things is from action and from simultaneous reaction and everything must be in equilibrium. These things have been said lest man should believe that he himself ascends towards God from himself, and not the Lord."—Swedenborg's Divine Love and Wisdom, n. 68.
